From the perspective of mimetic theory, the most serious problem with
the Left Behind series of novels, by Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins,(1)
is their re-sacralization of violence. Their version of Jesus is no longer
the Lamb slain but the same beastly violence of the Roman empire that John
of Patmos is trying to portray. Jesus, when he comes again, will simply
wield a vastly superior firepower, the epitome of righteous, sacred violence.

At stake is the God we meet in Jesus Christ, the God of whom St. John
says, "that God is light and in God there is no darkness at all" (1 John
1:5). In Jesus Christ we are finally able to see sacred violence for what
it is, namely, the darkness of our human violence wrongly attributed to
God. We human beings are the ones who put our faith in superior firepower.
But in the Left Behind novels the darkness of that human, satanic
violence is once again attributed to God, especially through the fictionalized
figure of Jesus in the last volume. If the function of the Gospel, and
the work of the Paraclete in the world, is to de-mythologize sacred violence
-- that is, to reveal all pictures of divine violence as an idolatry which
veils human violence behind a cloak of divine violence -- then these books
are a splendid example of a re-mythologizing anti-Gospel. And, considering
that the main villain in these books is the Antichrist, it goes beyond
ironic to tragic that their message ends up going in the direction opposite
to that of Christ's message.

For those who haven't ventured into reading any of the Left Behind
series, my main purpose here is to give examples of the re-sacralization
from the climactic book in the series,
Glorious Appearing. I argue
elsewhere for a nonviolent, de-mythologized reading of Revelation's many
images of violence.(2) Here, I primarily
share prime examples of how the Left Behind series takes these images
and explicitly connects them with Jesus (and God) as an agent of the violence,
with depictions that far exceed those in Revelation.

In the Book of Revelation the climactic moment is obviously in its closing
chapters 21-22, when the New Jerusalem comes down out of heaven to merge
with the earth and to provide healing for the nations. In the Left Behind
novels, on the other hand, the twelfth and final volume, Glorious Appearing,
takes the defeat of evil in Rev. 19-20 as the focus for the climactic moment.
Instead of the Lamb, which dominates the actual Book of Revelation, we
are given the hero Jesus as a great warrior on a white horse (apparently
taken to be the unnamed figure in Rev. 19), slaughtering millions. We read,
as the Antichrist, Nicolae Carpathia, gives his army the order to attack
Jerusalem:

The riders not thrown leaped from their horses and tried to
control them with the reins, but even as they struggled, their own flesh
dissolved, their eyes melted, and their tongues disintegrated. As Rayford
watched, the soldiers stood briefly as skeletons in now-baggy uniforms,
then dropped in heaps of bones as the blinded horses continued to fume
and rant and rave.

Seconds later the same plague afflicted the horses, their flesh and
eyes and tongues melting away, leaving grotesque skeletons standing, before
they too rattled to the pavement. (pp. 273-274)

With the first attack fizzling out, Carpathia regroups his troops for another
attack. By this time, the Jesus on his white horse has appeared, and we
read:

With the remnant just a few hundred yards to the east, the
besieged city of Jerusalem a half mile to the west, and the heavenly hosts
hovering directly above, Jesus nudged His magnificent white charger and
descended to the top of the Mount of Olives.

As He dismounted, Carpathia shrieked out his final command, "Attack!"
The hundred thousand troops followed orders, horsemen at full gallop firing,
foot soldiers running and firing, rolling stock rolling and firing.

And Jesus said, in that voice like a trumpet and the sound of rushing
waters, "I AM WHO I AM."

At that instant the Mount of Olives split in two from east to west,
the place Jesus stood moving to the north and the place where the Unity
Army stood moving to the south, leaving a large valley.

All the firing and the running and the galloping and the rolling stopped.
The soldiers screamed and fell, their bodies bursting open from head to
toe at every word that proceeded out of the mouth of the Lord as He spoke
to the captives within Jerusalem. "You shall flee through My mountain valley,
for the mountain valley reaches to Azal. Yes, you shall flee as you fled
from the earthquake in the days of Uzziah king of Judah. The Lord your
God has come, and all the saints with Me." ...

With that, Jesus mounted His horse and began His final triumphal entry
toward Jerusalem. During His first visit to earth He had ridden into the
city on a lowly donkey, welcomed by some but rejected by most. Now He rode
high on the majestic white steed, and with every word that came from His
mouth, the rest of the enemies of God -- except for Satan, the Antichrist,
and the False Prophet -- were utterly destroyed where they stood.

"This is the day of vengeance, that all things which were written have
been fulfilled. The loftiness of man shall be bowed down, and the haughtiness
of men shall be brought low; the Lord alone will be exalted today." (pp.
286, 288)

The next chapter brings the fate of the Antichrist, Nicolae Carpathia,
and his False Prophet, Leon Fortunato, before Jesus and the angels:

Jesus shook His head and Mac saw a great sadness in His face.
"You are responsible for the fate of billions. You and your False Prophet,
with whom you shed the blood of the innocents -- My followers, the prophets,
and My servants who believed in Me -- shall be cast alive into the lake
of fire." ...

Gabriel moved out of the way, and on the spot where he had stood, a
hole three feet in diameter opened in the ground and a putrid, sulfuric
odor burst forth, making Mac and everyone in the city hold their noses.
This was followed by a whistling blue flame that erupted from the hole
and rose twenty feet, which Mac could only compare to a monstrous acetylene
torch. This added the smell of ether to the mix, and Mac found the front
lines of the crowd backing away.

Even as far as he was from the action, Mac felt the tremendous heat
emitted by the raging pillar of fire. Jesus and the five angelic beings
were apparently immune to the smell and the heat, but both Carpathia and
Fortunato tried to back off. Michael held tight to each, still looking
to Jesus.

The Lord nodded sadly, and without hesitation, Michael briskly walked
the two to the edge of the hole. Fortunato caterwauled like a baby and
fought to escape, but with one mighty arm Michael pushed him into the hole.
His keening intensified and then faded as he fell. Carpathia did not struggle.
He merely covered his face with his forearms as he was dropped in, and
then his bawling echoed throughout Jerusalem until he had fallen far enough
away. The hole closed as quickly as it had opened, and the Beast and the
False Prophet were no more. (pp. 310-311)

If their writing isn't explicit enough about a violent Jesus, here's an
excerpt from a 60 Minutes II segment entitled "The Greatest Story
Ever Sold," which first aired April 14, 2004.(3)

Morley Safer: "The Left Behind novels give a graphic
version of the New Testament prophecy of the end of the world happening
in our time, in which only the righteous are saved. Glorious Appearing
tells the story of the return of an avenging Jesus, slaughtering non-believers
by the millions. It's an image of Jesus that many evangelicals say is long
overdue.

Jerry B. Jenkins: "Unfortunately, we've gone through a time when liberalism
has so twisted the real meaning of scripture that they've manufactured
a loving, wimpy Jesus that would never do anything in judgment. And that's
not the God of the Bible. That's not the way Jesus reads in the Scripture."

Tim LaHaye: "The biblical stuff is as close to the Bible interpretation
as we can get. But if they're not people who read the Bible, they don't
know which is which. And so they say we sort of invented this violent Jesus,
this judgmental Jesus. That stuff is straight from the Bible. The idea
of him slaying the enemy with the sword that comes from his mouth, which
is His Word, and the fact that the enemy's eyes melt in their heads, their
tongues disintegrate, their flesh drops off -- I didn't make that up. That's
out of the prophecy."

As far as I can tell, however, he did make it up. There's nothing about
the enemy's eyes melting in the Book of Revelation. Instead, twice we see
God wiping away the tears from the eyes of God's people (Rev. 7:17; 21:4).
There are people gnawing on their tongues in anguish (Rev. 16:10), and
birds feeding on the flesh of the dead (Rev. 19:17-21), but not tongues
simply disintegrating nor flesh dropping off at the words from Jesus' mouth.
If LaHaye means prophecy from somewhere else in scripture, then we fundamentally
disagree about how to read prophecy(4) --
namely, I contend that we read prophecy as a time-bound warning to a community
of God's people, and not as floating bits of literalism to apply at a moment
of one's choosing two thousand years later. Revelation, for example, is
written to warn the seven churches not to be deceived by Rome's beastly
military might or seductive wealth. We only apply it to our time by analogy
to today's empires which dominate the world through wealth and military
power -- our own United States presenting the best candidate.

So, once again, I see LaHaye's and Jenkins' reading of Revelation to
be a polar opposite. By my reading, the Left Behind books succumb
precisely to the thing Revelation is written to warn us of, namely, being
seduced by the riches and power of an earthly kingdom. In the same Morely
Safer interview, they confess that they "bleed red, white, and blue." Their
books celebrate the United States -- in my view, as an idolatrous substitute
for God's Kingdom in Jesus Christ.

To tell the story of Revelation is to tell the story of Jesus,
the Lamb, and ultimately to tell the story of God -- since the Lamb is
beside God throughout the entire book.

The slain Lamb's victory through suffering love is the heart of the
Revelation story. I want to say again that this theology, this counter-understanding
of victory in the Lamb, is more relevant today than ever. In the face of
terrorism and the glorification of war, we need the vision of "Lamb power"
to remind us that true victory comes in our world not through military
might but through self-giving love. Revelation's conquering Messiah is
the slain but standing Lamb, the very opposite of Rome's victory image.
In Revelation, Jesus conquers not by inflicting violence but by accepting
the violence inflicted upon him in crucifixion....

The heart of our difference is this: dispensationalists do not seem
to believe the Lamb has truly "conquered" or won the victory when he was
slaughtered. They preach the saving power of the blood of the Lamb in Jesus'
crucifixion, but it is not quite enough saving power for them. They need
Christ to come back again with some real power, not as a Lamb but as a
roaring lion. Jesus has to return so he can finish up the job of conquering.
As Hagee puts it, "The first time He came to earth, Jesus was the Lamb
of God, led in silence to the slaughter. The next time He comes, He will
be the Lion of the tribe of Judah who will trample His enemies until their
blood stains His garments, and He shall rule with a rod of iron. Even so,
come Lord Jesus!"(5)

But there is no indication that the author of Revelation ever wants
to call upon Jesus to return as a lion. John very deliberately replaces
the lion with the Lamb in chapter 5 and never again refers to Jesus as
a lion. Only evil figures are identified as lion-like in subsequent chapters
of Revelation -- the locusts have teeth like lions in chapter 9, and the
horses of death have heads like lions.

So where do dispensationalists get the idea for Jesus to return as a
lion? I say they fabricate this lion-like Jesus because they have a problem
with the Lamb's weakness and vulnerability. They crave the avenging Jesus
who will return as a lion and show his true power and fury: "This is no
weak-wristed, smiling Jesus who comes to pay the earth a condolence call,"
Hagee says about Christ's future return. "This is a furious Christ, ready
to confront the gathered armies of the world on a plain called Armageddon."(6)
(pp. 135, 137-138)

Let me summarize: Instead of faith in God's conquering power of life that
we witness in the Crucified Risen Jesus, dispensationalist theology puts
its faith in superior firepower, a sacralized violence with which to fight
violence. The revelation in Jesus Christ, the Lamb slain, of that sacred
violence
as satanic violence ("Satan casting out Satan"(7))
loses out in these books precisely to the deception of Satan -- the one
which John of Patmos is portraying to us in the Book of Revelation. And
I believe that the stakes are more than just a flawed theology. For the
same age-old deception of Satan which fooled the Roman empire now fools
a politics of empire currently coming to life in the United States,(8)
a politics often supported with vigor by those who espouse a "Left Behind"
dispensationalist theology.

4. For an excellent presentation on
how to properly read prophecy in scripture, see Barbara Rossing's book
The
Rapture Exposed: The Message of Hope in the Book of Revelation,
chapter 4, "Prophecy and Apocalypse." She compares John of Patmos' vision
to that of Ebenezer Scrooge in Dickens' A Christmas Carol. Biblical
prophecy generally gives us a vision of what might happen if there
is not repentance, or faithful endurance with the Lord.